Orr Danon Of Hailo On the Future of Artificial Intelligence

An Interview With David Leichner

Retail is another big area of growth for edge AI where we’ll see companies using more accurate and insightful data and analytics to better understand customer activity and improve the customer’s shopping experience.

As a part of our series about the future of Artificial Intelligence, I had the pleasure of interviewing Orr Danon.

Orr Danon is the CEO of Hailo, an AI-focused chipmaker that develops specialized AI processors that enable data center-class performance on edge devices. Prior to joining Hailo, he served in the Israel Defense Forces for 10 years. Orr graduated from Tel Aviv University with a Master of Science in Electrical and Electronics Engineering and is currently based in Israel.

Thank you so much for joining us in this interview series! Can you share with us the ‘backstory” of how you decided to pursue this career path in AI?

Prior to founding Hailo, I served in the Israel Defense Forces and spent over a decade working at a leading technological unit. During this time, I led some of the largest and most complex interdisciplinary projects in the Israeli intelligence community, some of which received the Israel Defense Award from the President of Israel, and the Creative Thinking Award from the Head of Military Intelligence.

I did my bachelor’s degree in physics and mathematics at the Hebrew University in Jerusalem, and my M.Sc. in Electrical Engineering (cum laude) at the Tel Aviv University. When I left the army, I joined three of my friends who served with me, and together we decided to found our own startup. AI was an up-and-coming field which seemed to hold huge promise, but it was largely limited to cloud applications, and we knew there was a need to develop a technology that would enable high performance ML processing on the edge.

What lessons can others learn from your story?

I believe that the keyword is determination. When we came up with the concept of our technology we consulted with a leading expert in the field who told us that our idea would not be possible. But that didn’t discourage us, it maybe even encouraged us to prove that we could do it, and pushed us to deliver faster and better. It took us less than two years from conception of the idea to a successful tapeout of our first generation product.

Can you tell our readers about the most interesting projects you are working on now?

In March 2023, Hailo launched its second generation of AI processors, the Hailo-15™, which is a vision processor designed for high performance AI processing in cameras, to enable both AI video enhancement as well as video analytics of complex tasks and models running in real time and on the edge. While preparing for a successful market introduction of the product together with some of our early adopter customers, we are already working on the next generation of our products which will enable more AI compute power at a better cost- and power-efficiency.

None of us are able to achieve success without some help along the way. Is there a particular person who you are grateful towards who helped get you to where you are? Can you share a story about that?

Zohar Zisapel, the first person to believe in Hailo and our angel investor who gave us our seed money, is undoubtedly the person to whom I’ll be eternally grateful. In 2017, about a year after we founded Hailo, we lost Rami Feig, our CEO, in a tragic accident. This left us sorrow streaked and confused, and Zohar was the one to support us in these challenging times.

When I thought of suggesting myself as the CEO for the company, Zohar encouraged me to take the role. He was immeasurably supportive, and I confided and consulted with him frequently. He was this kind of generous person who let you believe that the good ideas are entirely yours, and that he was just there to moderate, support and inspire. Zohar passed away last month and I already miss his good advice and support.

In your own words, can you explain generative AI and where you think it’s going in the future?

Generative AI is the ability of machines to process an enormous amount of collectively accumulated knowledge and generate new insights in the form of image, text, video or other media in response to prompts.

The usage of generative AI is becoming increasingly ubiquitous, and undoubtedly with time we will see it embedded in many of the applications and tools we use on a daily basis, such as word processors, presentation makers, communication tools etc. For this to happen, most of the processing will need to take place on the edge to enable seamless user experience. Just like we’re using our local version of Word or PowerPoint even in offline mode and expect it to respond without latency, so we would want the new features enabled by generative AI, like text suggestions, image generation, conversation summarization, etc. to be always available.

When it comes to applications that handle sensitive information such as financial or medical data, the need to process the information on the edge and not store it on the cloud becomes even more crucial due to privacy and safety concerns.

What are the 5 things that most excite you about the AI industry? Why?

• Every day we discover new capabilities, applications and use cases for edge AI.
• Our customers are diverse and deal with anything from autonomous forklifts through QA in industrial processes and large scale video management systems to driver assist systems for the automotive industry.
• We know edge AI has the ability to transform and improve every aspect of our lives — and that’s mind blowing.
• Edge AI enables devices to make smarter decisions faster, and with greater accuracy.
• By processing data at the device level, edge AI reduces latency and ultimately increases safety and privacy, while minimizing bandwidth and cloud storage costs.

What are the 5 areas of growth for the edge AI industry?

• In the security space, we expect to see large scale systems which can process multiple tasks on a large number of video streams concurrently.
• As regulators demand more safety features in private vehicles and light trucks, we expect to see edge AI growing in the autonomous and assisted driving industries as well.
• Retail is another big area of growth for edge AI where we’ll see companies using more accurate and insightful data and analytics to better understand customer activity and improve the customer’s shopping experience.
• AI is being largely deployed in factories for industrial automation, quality control, productivity improvement and predictive maintenance.
• We also expect to see edge AI playing a central role in defense and homeland security systems, in which machine vision can replace or enhance soldier capabilities and safe lives.

As you know, there is an ongoing debate between prominent scientists, (personified as a debate between Elon Musk and Mark Zuckerberg,) about whether advanced AI poses an existential danger to humanity. What is your position about this?

With the emergence of every new technology comes the fear of the unknown, and as with most new technologies, it could be used to benefit or harm, depending on the users and what they wish to achieve. I strongly believe in humanity and our ability to restrain our power, while placing regulations and policies to prevent harmful usage of AI.

What can be done to prevent such concerns from materializing? And what can be done to assure the public that there is nothing to be concerned about?

It all starts with transparency, and collaboration, combined with responsible policies. Furthermore, there are technical tools that can be used to assist such policies, such as the usage of open source systems which can be audited and verified; moving to edge processing architectures which inherently reduce the risk of data leakage.

As you know, there are not that many women in your industry. Can you advise what is needed to engage more women into the AI industry?

From my perspective, as much as we (like many other companies in the industry) do our best to make our workplace diverse, the real effective stage which we as a society need to invest in is the younger ages, both in education and by providing good role models who will inspire young women to study relevant areas and start their way in the industry. This impact will both make the industry more diverse, as well as overall help dramatically increase the talent pool which pushes the industry forward

What is your favorite “Life Lesson Quote”? Can you share a story of how that had relevance to your own life?

“The biggest risk is not taking any risk” — Mark Zuckerberg

Over the years, I’ve become more comfortable with taking calculated risks and understanding the potential benefits and consequences of each decision. With support and encouragement from peers and by carefully evaluating and considering opportunities, I’ve been able to achieve success in a competitive industry. I’d encourage others, especially younger people, to not be afraid of taking risks and to know that even if the risks don’t pay off immediately, there’s usually a valuable lesson to be learned through the experience.

How have you used your success to bring goodness to the world? Can you share a story?

I try to encourage volunteering and provide the platform for employees to volunteer, mainly by exposing underprivileged young adults from the social and economic periphery in Israel to high-tech. It’s important for both individuals and companies to continue supporting and giving back to the communities around them.

We are also taking, both me personally as well as the rest of the Hailo team, lots of time to mentor and support younger companies as they start their journey and need someone to consult with.

You are a person of great influence. If you could start a movement that would bring the most amount of good to the most amount of people, what would that be? You never know what your idea can trigger. :-)

I’d want to start a movement that supports access to education, which is probably the key to almost everything that happens later in your life. Education is critical to professional success and social mobility and it’s, therefore, especially important for children and young adults from under-privileged backgrounds to have access to resources that will give them a good education to become the most successful, influential and fulfilled version of themselves.

How can our readers further follow your work online?

Links to Orr’s LinkedIn + Hailo website / LinkedIn / Facebook / twitter

Thank you so much for joining us. This was very inspirational, and we wish you continued success in your important work.

About The Interviewer: David Leichner is a veteran of the Israeli high-tech industry with significant experience in the areas of cyber and security, enterprise software and communications. At Cybellum, a leading provider of Product Security Lifecycle Management, David is responsible for creating and executing the marketing strategy and managing the global marketing team that forms the foundation for Cybellum’s product and market penetration. Prior to Cybellum, David was CMO at SQream and VP Sales and Marketing at endpoint protection vendor, Cynet. David is a member of the Board of Trustees of the Jerusalem Technology College. He holds a BA in Information Systems Management and an MBA in International Business from the City University of New York.